Sociology and Modern Social ProblemsEllwood, Charles A. (Charles Abram)
General
Sociology and Modern Social Problems
Ellwood, Charles A. (Charles Abram)
Social problems; Sociology
In primitive communities and in newly settled districts the family often
carries on all essential industrial activities. It produces all the raw
material, manufactures the finished products, and consumes the same. But
with the growth of complex societies there has come a great industrial
division of labor, and the family has delegated industrial activity
after activity to some other institution until at the present time the
modern family performs scarcely any industrial activities, except the
preparation of food for immediate consumption. Even this, however, in
modern cities seems about to be delegated to some other institution.
All that need be said at present about the delegation of the industrial
activities of the family to other industrial institutions is that the
movement is not one which need cause any anxiety so long as it does not
interfere with the essential function of the family, namely, the birth
and rearing of children. Even though children can no longer learn the
rudiments of industry in their home life, still it is possible through
manual and industrial training in our public schools to teach all
children this. And the removal of industries from the home, even such
essential industries as the preparation of food, is to be regarded as a
boon if it gives more time to the parents, especially to the mother, for
the proper care and bringing up of their children.
But the removal of industries from the family group has not always had
the beneficent effect of simply giving more time to the parents for the
proper care of their children. On the contrary, the removal of these
industries has often been followed by the removal of the parents
themselves from the home and the practical disintegration of the family.
This has been particularly the case where married women have gone into
factories. Under such circumstances children have often been neglected,
allowed to grow up on the streets, and to grow up as unsocialized
individuals in general. It would seem that the labor of married women
outside of the home should be forbidden by the state, except in certain
instances, with a view to assuring to the state itself a better
citizenship. The labor of children in factories and other industrial
institutions has sprung very largely from the same general causes. While
child labor may have the merit of giving the child some industrial
training, still it has been shown that it dwarfs the child in body and
mind, produces a one-sided development, fails to prepare for citizenship
in the higher sense, and so must be regarded as altogether an evil. Even
the labor of the young unmarried women in factories and shops, when they
should be preparing for the duties of wifehood and motherhood, is to
some extent an evil in society, though not by any means of the same
proportions as the labor of married women.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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